Classes with Kevin

Mr. O’Brien has written and produced over 40 plays and screenplays. In this course, we’ll look at the challenge of short plays. We’ll read a few one-act plays live in class - with students playing parts if they’d like to! And we’ll try our hand at writing our own short plays - comedies, dramas, adventures and farces! Sign up for the live or recorded course at Homeschool Connections.

Doesn't science contradict the claims of religion? What about evolution? What about the faith most people put in science and how it's the only valid way of examining truth? In this intense six week course, we will take an introductory look at the relation between Science and the Catholic Faith. We'll also learn some fun facts about the history of science - and how priests and monks have made some of the greatest scientific discoveries in history! This course is an important primer for young Catholics interested in Science and in how Faith and Reason go together.



Sign up for the live or recorded course at Homeschool Connections.

“My audience are the people who think God is dead,” Flannery O’Connor said.  Her stories are shocking and sometimes violent for this very reason. O’Connor’s goal was to illustrate how the Grace of God operates in our lives. “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful,” O’Connor observed. We will read several stories and essays by O’Connor, along with some letters she wrote to friends, in which she displays her profound love of Christ and her deep understanding of how storytelling can bring people - in surprising ways - to the glory of God. This course is especially good for aspiring writers, as O’Connor often wrote on “the process of writing”, and we will examine her stories not merely for the meaning in them, but to understand more deeply their art and intricacy.
(Note that though these stories are deeply Catholic and perhaps the most profoundly Christian fiction of the 20th century, they can be disturbing; they also contain character…

Mr. O’Brien is known for his portrayals of famous saints, both on EWTN’s The Journey Home and in one-man stage shows that he has performed around the world. In this course, Mr. O’Brien will portray a different saint every day!  Students will “interview” each saint live in class by asking him questions, based on their study and research. Our Final Project will feature each student portraying his or her favorite saint - either live on webcam, or in a written paper.


Sign up for the live or recorded course at Homeschool Connections.

Here's an article I wrote for an upcoming issue of the St. Austin Review about my course Love and the Meaning of Life ...


Love and the Meaning of Life by Kevin O’Brien

I am teaching a course for Homeschool Connections called Love and the Meaning of Life.  I teach online using a webcam.  My students, from around the world, are intelligent and sensitive high school aged teens who are homeschooled - and who, much to my delight as a teacher, are eager to learn.

This course examines the most crucial question of all.  What is love?  And what is the Meaning of Life?  Obviously the Meaning of Life is Love, since God is Love (1 John 4:8).  But what is love?  And how are we to fulfill the great commandments of loving God and loving our neighbor?  And, as this issue of the St. Austin Review asks, what is “True Love” and how does “Passionate Reason” relate to “Romantic Feeling”?

In this course we examine Love and the Meaning of Lifeusing both fiction and non-fictionas our guides.  Here’s a brief re…

From light verse (funny poems) to the works of the American Humorists; from funny plays to comedies with serious themes, we will examine the role of Humor in literature - and in life!  Our Final Project will be a fun poem, story, play or video that each student will make, to be shared in class.

Sign up for the live or recorded course at Homeschool Connections.

(Literature) Cultural Literacy for Catholics
What are some of the basic things all educated Catholics should know?  Sadly, most Catholics don’t know them!  From the point of view of Literature and its impact on culture, these things basic “everybody should know this” stuff would include the issues we will examine in each class meeting …
The general scope of the Bible: what sort of books does it include and what’s the overall story it tells?  How does the biblical narrative fit in to the Great Empires of history? Who is Job and why do people say, “the patience of Job”? Who is Bathsheba and what happened to David because of her? Who is St. Paul and why does he writing fill so much of the New Testament? What is the Allegory of the Cave? Who were the Church Fathers and why are they so important? What were the Great Heresies and why should we care? What is a Troubadour and what do they have to do with St. Francis? What was the Reformation? What happens in Hamlet? Why do people think Descartes and Ka…